Art Students Get Unexpected Dose of Creation Geology from Commencement Speaker 05/31/2002
Exclusive A funny thing happened on the way to graduation:
students of Cal State Northridge’s College of Arts and Music got a dose of catastrophist
geology. Commencement speaker Bran Ferren, a media consultant, was illustrating a point about
“non-obvious phenomena,” with a series of examples, when he asked the assembled candidates
for Masters and
Bachelors degrees in theater, art, journalism and music, along with their professors and a
large crowd of family and friends, a question that sounded like something out of a creation seminar:
“If you were standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, how long would you think it took to form?
A million years? Ten million? A hundred million?” He asked for shows of hands
for how many thought it would take anywhere from a billion to a few hundred years. A few timid
hands voted for the young end of the scale. He challenged them to think about it. If it
took a long time, why wouldn’t the whole world look the same? Then he said,
Did it only rain over Arizona and Utah? Clearly we were taught
something wrong. Something else must have happened. Current theory is that there was a
big dam ... a lake broke and most of the heavy lifting of how you did the Grand Canyon was done in a
matter of weeks to months. And the same process of weathering and erosion that took place
everywhere else happened.
Ferren continued on with other non-geological examples of non-obvious phenomena, and the usual commencement-style
rhetoric about making the world a better place and finding your goal in life.
This little anecdote, uttered in a nonchalant manner as a passing
thought, was probably barely noted by the students who were eager to get on with celebrating the
end of school. But it is
significant. For over 130 years it has been common knowledge that the Grand Canyon took millions
of years to form; it was obvious! Evolutionists were cocky sure about it, just as they bluff
about everything else. But lately, the
timescale for Grand Canyon formation has been plummeting; from 50 million
to ten million years, then two million, then less than a million. It was young-earth creationists
like Walter Brown and Steve Austin who proposed the dam-breach theory! Now,
it appears the rest of the geological community is opening up to this possibility without giving the
creationists credit for the idea. This is a radical change of heart by uniformitarians!
It should be shocking for all tourists, standing at Yavapai
Point, to consider. Surely an event of this magnitude was not your everyday process. If
catastrophes this big did indeed occur on the earth, what about the fossils, the layers, and everything else?
Could this open the door for realistic consideration of Noah’s Flood as true history?
Don’t count on it, but there is a lesson to be learned from Ferren’s remarks, stated as they
were to a secular crowd (with no boos and hisses in response) – the creationists
were right! The evolutionists and experts and national park signs were wrong!
Take note, and good luck in your career.
Next headline on: Dating Methods. •
Next headline on: Geology. •
Next headline on: School.
DNA Translation Machinery Is the Major Cell Building Project 05/31/2002
“The ribosomal RNA [rRNA] genes encode the enzymatic scaffold of
the ribosome and thereby perform perhaps the most basic of all
housekeeping functions. However, recent data suggests that they might
also control important aspects of cell behavior.” Thus begins a
minireview in the
May 31
issue of Cell, which says that one of the biggest, if not the
ultimate, cellular subsystem is preparing and controlling the machinery to
translate DNA into proteins:
An actively cycling eukaryotic cell expends between 35% and 60% of its
total nuclear transcription effort in making the 18S, 5.8S, and 28S
ribosomal RNAs (rRNA) (Paule, 1998 , and references therein). The
5S rRNA and the small nucleolar RNAs required for ribosome biogenesis,
account for another 10% to 20%. Thus, the assembly of the
translational machinery occupies around 80% of nuclear transcription in
yeast, while in the proliferating mammalian cell as much as 50% is
dedicated to this goal. Even relatively small changes in this
commitment are likely to have extensive repercussions on the
cell’s economy, limiting proliferation rates and perhaps even cell
fate. ... Though little is known of the changes that occur in vivo, one
would suspect that, given the longevity of ribosomes and the highly
variable proliferation rates of different somatic cell types, rRNA
transcription rates must be regulated over a wide range if neither a
ribosome deficit nor an overproduction is to occur.
The minireview by Tom Moss and Victor Stefanovsky, “At the Center
of Eukaryotic Life,” goes on to describe many functions of ribosomal
RNA, including regulatory functions previously unknown. rRNA
molecules appear to silence some genes, a mystery that may be explained
by having backup copies available in case damage occurs to the highly
active rRNA genes. They conclude, “Recent work argues that
the rRNA genes are not simply bystanders in the decisions on cell fate.
Understanding the regulatory network surrounding the rRNA genes is then an
essential part of understanding cell growth regulation. It may even
turn out that the housekeeper is in fact keeping the house.”
Housekeeper? Doesn’t that
imply intelligent design? Here is another subsystem that was considered
a “bystander” but turns out to be a high-level manager.
Without tight management performed by rRNA, the cell would die.
Notice how much equipment and design goes into translation of DNA,
which speaks of a language convention (see our May
22 commentary), another indicator of design. Evolutionists
imagine all this complex equipment originating from simple RNA
ribozymes,
which show (under controlled lab conditions) a little activity and replication,
but there is a
tremendous gap
in complexity between artificial ribozymes and the machinery found
in single-celled eukaryotes, like yeast. How did yeast figure out
it might be good to have hundreds of backup copies, and evolve the
equipment to keep them locked up until an emergency? These are
capabilities far in excess of what is needed for survival. Yet
evolutionists ask us to believe this complexity arose by a process that
can’t even add 1.5% length to a bird
beak in 30 years. Natural selection, wandering aimlessly in the
dark, is wholly incapable of such complex, interdependent operations.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry.
Mouse Genome Released; Overturns Evolutionary Notions 05/31/2002
The full genome of the mouse has been released, and “already long-held
notions are being overturned,” writes Elizabeth Pennisi writing in the
May 31
online edition of Science. The 1970’s picture of
a genome as being a string of genes linked together, for one, has been
overturned in the last 30 years as scientists realize that there are
long sections of non-coding DNA, parts that have been duplicated or
inserted or transposed, and more. Another surprise is that some
of these non-coding regions, which evolutionists thought were free to
mutate without harming the organism, appear conserved between human and
mouse, and that different parts of the genome appear to mutate at
radically different rates if animals diverged from a common ancestor.
Evolutionary biologists appear to be in for hard times explaining some of
the findings. “For one,” writes Pennisi, “it will
complicate the work of evolutionary biologists, who often attempt to date
when new species emerged using so-called molecular clocks. These
clocks depend on the relative number of mutations in a species and are
based on the premise that they ‘tick’ at a constant rate
throughout the history of the DNA. A number of skeptics have
questioned the reliability of these clocks (Science, 5 March 1999, p.
1435), and the new findings could provide them with new ammunition.”
We’ve been reporting this fact for
months (see Feb 26 and
Oct 1, for instance).
The picture is complicated and confusing, certainly not what one would
expect if evolution were true. Whatever the genome story is telling,
it is not a simple evolutionary tale. “Genomes are evolving in a
completely nonuniform way,” complains one biologist, and another
mourns that the wide variation in mutation rates in non-coding regions is
“a complication we didn’t anticipate.” Maybe it would
make more sense if they looked at the genomes with a focus on function
rather than phylogeny; i.e., intelligent design instead of evolution.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary
Theory. • Next headline on: The Cell and
Biochemistry.
Mars May Have Enough Water to Flood Planet 05/30/2002
The BBC News reports that Mars may have enough ice locked up in the
soil (see May 28 headline) to have flooded the
planet in the past. The article states, “The underground ice
solves one of the deepest and longstanding mysteries about the Red Planet:
where did the water go?”
Observation 1: Mars has no liquid water now, but
could have had a worldwide flood in the past. Observation 2: Earth has a
surface 70% covered by liquid water and could have had a worldwide flood
in the past. Skeptic: Noah’s Flood is just a legend.
Where did the water come from? Where did it go?”
Next headline on: Mars.
How Did Uranus and Neptune Form? 05/30/2002
The June 2002 issue of Sky and
Telescope NewsNotes
section, p. 20, laments the problems of explaining the ice giants:
“Pity Uranus and Neptune. Not only do they evade the naked eye and
underwhelm the telescope, no one can even explain why they exist.”
The three leading proposals all have problems:
- Core Accretion, the standard model, would take too long.
Rocky accretions that would build up enough gravity to collect gas
would take hundreds of millions of years, but accretion disks around
other stars don’t appear to last that long.
- Disk Instability, a model proposed in the
March 2002
Icarus might only take a few hundred years for blobs of gas to
decouple and ice particles to settle in. Then a nearby hot O star might
blow away the gas atmosphere in a million years. Other planetary
scientists are glad to see an alternative to core accretion, but think
this model is contrived and depends on unlikely timing. The
Icarus article begins,
“The robustness of the current theory of the origin of the Solar System
deteriorates sharply with increasing distance from the Sun.” It
claims core accretion has a hard enough time with Jupiter and Saturn, but
“The problems facing the formation in situ of the ice giant planets,
Uranus and Neptune, by the core accretion mechanism are even more severe”
because not only would they take too long to form, but any accumulating
material would have been ejected into cometary orbits.
“Ice giant planets cannot form in the standard model,” they
affirm, and therefore propose their alternative. Hal Levison,
however, is skeptical that the solar system could form so near a hot star.
- Migration, in which Uranus and Neptune would form at Jupiter’s
distance then migrate outward, does not account for the compositional
differences between the gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and the ice
giants. This model is proposed in the
May Astronomical Journal.
Hal Levison explains what he calls his “fairy tale” migration
theory in the June 2
Astrobiology
Magazine; where he calls his and the other theories “crazy.”
He concludes, “We have to start thinking of alternatives.
Probably there’s a method for their formation that no one has even
thought of yet.”
Other puzzles about these ice giants,
Uranus
and
Neptune, include
their ring
systems (which appear
young and tenuous), their strange moons
like
Miranda
(which has composite terrains with sharp edges and one of the
highest cliffs in the solar system),
Ariel
(whose canyon floors appear to have been resurfaced by a fluid), and
Triton (a large body that orbits
retrograde and, though -391oF, has active geysers, a fresh-looking
surface and complex terrain). In addition, there are the extremely
high winds on Neptune (fastest
in the solar system), the oddity that Uranus is tipped on its side,
and the magnetic fields which are highly inclined from the poles and
offset from the center of mass.
Compare the head-scratching and hand-wringing in this story with the neat,
computer graphic simulations of solar system evolution seen on educational
TV shows and diagrams in textbooks. Time to face the real worlds.
Next headline on: Solar System.
Membrane Channels Are Doorways to Health – or Death 05/29/2002
The latest issue of
Neuron, May 30
has an essay about membrane channels and their importance.
The authors of “Channels Gone Bad” begin,
Channels regulate ion flow across membranes and are an essential
component of cell function. Indeed, nearly all cell membranes
contain ion channels, proteins with diverse roles, and sometimes highly
complex behaviors. Channels are activated and inactivated by many
signals and their function regulated by countless processes. Yet,
beware of the aberrant channel. Channels that open when they
shouldn’t, channels that do not open very well or at all, channels
that stay open too long, misplaced channels, lack of channels, too many
channels; all these scenarios can have disastrous consequences.
They describe some of the horrible consequences of mistakes in the genes
that code for these complex proteins: cancer, numerous types of disease, and death.
Published the same day, the
May 30
Nature has a report on how ion channels open and close
their gates, and features two more papers on this subject by the pioneer
in this field, Roderick MacKinnon of the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute:
the
crystal structure and gating mechanisms and
conformational
changes of potassium ion channels. The papers contain detailed
pictorial models of how the channels and their selectivity filters
attract and transmit the correct molecules rapidly and accurately, but
repel interlopers.
We’ve reported several interesting
discoveries recently about these amazing channels. Here is another
complex function – active transport – that would have had to be
operational early on in chemical
evolution, independently of the origin of the genetic code, translation
mechanism, and reproduction, to allow nutrients to enter and waste to
exit. So many precise parts would have had to come together
simultaneously to evolve a living cell, that it is incredible to believe
it could ever happen by chance. Not only are these channels precision
engineered gates, this article shows that small abnormalities wreak havoc.
Read our previous entries about potassium
channels, chloride channels, and
water channels and stand in awe of the
wonders within your body keeping you functioning right now without your
conscious thought or control.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry. •
Next amazing story.
Pulsar Ages Are All Mixed Up 05/28/2002
The June issue of Sky and Telescope is on newsstands, and its NewsNotes
highlights what it calls “The Pulsar Age Crisis.” Findings that some appear
older than previously believed, and one pulsar perhaps 15 times younger than earlier reported, “undermine
a seemingly secure corner of astronomy.” Age-dating a pulsar by the amount
of proper motion from the center of the supernova remnant often disagrees wildly from
estimates of its spin-down time, the previous
standard of dating. One astronomer comments, “These results make people
aware of the uncertainty, especially in the case of young pulsars, and of the assumptions
that go into the age estimates.”
At least they’re honest about it, but this was one
of the “secure corners” of astronomy; what confidence do we have that the
proper motion technique is any more reliable? Those rely on assumptions, too.
Next headline on: Dating Methods.
Mammal Family Tree A Conflicting Tangle 05/28/2002
An international team of zoologists publishing in the
May 28 online preprints of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined the mitochondrial DNA of
60 mammalian species and tried to construct an evolutionary family tree. Although
some relationships were listed as “strongly supported,” their
article mentions a number of controversies in the ranks, and their
resulting tree seems to break other pet theories, as these excerpts indicate [emphasis
and bracketed words added]:
- The phylogenetic position of Pholidota has been a matter of debate. A
sister group relationship between Xenarthra and Pholidota in a
basal position in the eutherian tree has been proposed (e.g., ref. 12).
However, other authors (13) have challenged this proposal.
- Despite the anticipated close relationship between
Dermoptera and Primates, the grouping of Dermoptera within the order
Primates as the sister group of the Anthropoidea is highly
unexpected. ... [later in paper] The position
of Dermoptera within Primates as the sister group of
Anthropoidea is highly unexpected, even though there are morphological
arguments in favor of a close relationship between the two
orders (44).
- The traditional order Lipotyphla splits into three lineages:
Erinaceomorpha, Tenrecomorpha, and Soricomorpha. On the basis of their
separate phylogenetic positions [i.e., assumed evolutionary ancestry]
and the depths of their origin, each of
these lineages is recognized as having ordinal status.
- Consistent with other mtg studies (10, 11), the ML
amino acid analysis did not favor a monophyletic Rodentia but rather
split the order into two groups, one with myomorph rodents and the
Taiwan vole, the other consisting of the two hystricognaths and the
dormouse and the squirrel.
- The support for branch K (African clade) is conclusive but the
relationships between the aardvark, the elephant shrew, and the
tenrec remained largely unresolved
- The relationship between Carnivora and
Perissodactyla (40) was morphologically unexpected, but this
relationship has been generally supported in subsequent molecular
studies.
- The relationship between artiodactyls and cetaceans [whales] was recently
addressed in two morphological/paleontological studies (51, 52). The
conclusions of these studies were inconsistent. Gingerich et al. (51),
in agreement with molecular results, concluded that cetaceans have
their origin within Artiodactyla, whereas Thewissen [a leading theorist
on whale evolution] et al. (52) inferred
that Artiodactyla and Cetacea were sister groups. Test of the
latter phylogeny relative to the best mtg tree found the latter
relationship as highly improbable (Table 3). Although the morphological
conclusions may initially seem incongruent, both might be correct if
Archaeoceti is paraphyletic. Archaeocete paraphyly has been
suggested (53-56) and it is possible that the study by Thewissen et al.
focused on taxa that do not form a monophyletic group together with
extant cetaceans.
- The amino acid analyses reconstructed trees that were largely congruent
irrespective of the method used. In comparison, the nucleotide
trees differed considerably depending on the analytical approach used.
- The mtg results challenge several traditional or semitraditional
morphological hypotheses for eutherian relationships... [six examples
cited]
- Finally, the
pinniped results lend no support to the morphological hypothesis of a
sister group relationship between Odobenidae and Phocidae to the
exclusion of Otariidae (21), underlining the problems associated with
basing phylogenetic conclusions on anatomical features that may
have strong adaptive values.
- The suggestions of a Cretaceous origin of eutherian orders have been met
with suspicion by many paleontologists. It has been argued that
the molecular estimates suggesting early origin of eutherian orders are
artifactual and caused by accelerated molecular evolution at the
Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary or immediately thereafter (63).
However, a post-K/T acceleration of this kind would actually have
an opposite effect, as calibration points such as A/C-60 (the split
between ruminant artiodactyls and cetancodonts 60 MY B.P.) (58),
placed within the postulated window of accelerated evolution, would tend
to shrink the estimated datings of earlier divergences.
Furthermore, comparisons between estimates based on eutherian
calibration points of different ages do not suggest any effects of this
kind (49).
- If the proposed
relationship between the zhelestids and the heterogenous eutherian group
is phylogenetically correct, the zhelestid fossils support mtg analyses
that place primate origin and divergences much deeper than
commonly conceived (2, 19, 49, 58, 59).
- The trees reconstructed in the real data studies and the mtg analyses show
pronounced similarities when they are viewed as unrooted.
- The capacity of
mt rRNA genes for resolving ordinal mammalian relationships
may be more limited than generally believed (e.g., ref. 68). Only the
stem regions of the mt rRNA genes seem to carry a useful (albeit
marginal) phylogenetic signal and inclusion of the other parts of these
sequences may increase the background noise and promote the
selection of the wrong signal (20).
- One of the main differences between the mtg results and the recent
mt/nuclear studies (7) is related to the position of Erinaceomorpha,
which in mtg analyses (both amino acid and nucleotide) has a basal
position in the eutherian tree. This finding is inconsistent with
nucleotide analyses of nuclear sequences, which preferably place
Erinaceomorpha with Soricomorpha in a less basal position.
- As is evident from the branch lengths in Fig. 1, the mt evolutionary
rate of the anthropoids is fast compared with other eutherian lineages.
- Superficially, the trees shown in Figs. 1 and 2 may appear strikingly
different. ... Independent of analytical method, all amino acid analyses placed this
point on the branch leading to myomorph rodents and the vole, whereas ML
nucleotide analysis placed it on the short Xenarthra branch,
alternatively on the branch leading to the African clade. However, as a
result of the short branches separating basal eutherian
divergences, an mtg amino acid tree with the root placed on the African
clade branch is not statistically refuted under a rate
heterogeneity model when Erinaceomorpha is excluded from the data set
(Table 3).
- The current mtg analyses and the
recent mt/nuclear studies identify different rooting points in the
eutherian tree. It is as yet not clear whether this inconsistency is
related to the OG or to the eutherian data sets, or both. Whatever the
reasons for this discrepancy, it is evident that the establishment of
the rooting point of the eutherian tree is of paramount importance to
the discussion of eutherian evolution, both molecular and morphological.
We apologize for the length of this entry, but
sometimes the devil is in the details. We wanted our readers to experience
the sweating that goes on behind closed academic doors trying to put
together an evolutionary tale for the textbooks and media sound bites.
Does anyone feel confident that evolutionists have a consistent story here?
That this paper makes things better? That evolution just jumps right out
of the data? That they are making progress? Ever since Linnaeus,
morphology (outward appearance and skeletal structure) has been the gold
standard for establishing taxonomy, and ever since Darwin, morphology has been
the basis for building family trees (phylogenies). But now that we have means
of comparing genes, mitochondrial DNA and proteins, the picture is more
confused than ever. Old favorite groupings are out, and strange bedfellows
are in. The PBS Evolution series boasted about the clear family
tree of whales, but this is contradicted in quote 7 above. Quote 13 seems
to say that the data only match when unrooted; i.e., not having a common
ancestor – so where is the evolution?
The tweak space here is considerable. When genetic
relationships don’t match, the evolutionists invoke their hand-waving
ideas of parallel evolution (paraphyly); i.e., that different groups that look
very similar had the same sets of accidents on different paths, or convergent
evolution, that totally different lineages converged on the same appearance.
When those fail, they can fall back on
rate heterogeneity, another fudge factor that
supposes different genes mutate at different rates. A creationist would
expect similarities between similar
types of animals. For evolutionists, molecular phylogeny has clearly not been
the proof they expected. Remember articles like these the next time
you see one of those nice, neat-looking family trees that look so solid. The
inside is full of termites, and the outside is a facade.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory. •
Next headline on: Mammals.
Mars Soil Loaded with Water Ice 05/28/2002
Latest neutron measurements from the new
Mars
Odyssey spacecraft indicate high levels of hydrogen in the first meter
of Martian soil within 60o of the poles, which scientists
are interpreting as abundant water ice, 20% to 50% by mass.
We’re not surprised. Some of
Saturn’s moons and rings are nearly 100% water ice. Ice is
not water, and water is not life. “What are the implications
for life?” asks the
press
release. We’ll give evolutionists all the earth-like planets
they want, with oceans galore; life is another story.
Next headline on: Mars.
Key Evolutionary Speciation Mechanism Questioned 05/28/2002
The “founder effect” (developed by Ernst Mayr in 1954)
has been challenged by a team of scientists publishing in the
May 28 online
preprints of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Textbooks commonly show this effect, where a small population or single
breeding pair enters a new habitat (the founders) and starts a new
population that rapidly develops into a new species. (Technically,
the founders create a genetic bottleneck because of reduced heterozygosity
of alleles, allowing greater expression of recessive characters.)
These authors found, however, no such genetic bottleneck in
a real world case.
They studied historically-known invasions of Pacific islands by Australian
silvereye birds, and found no evidence that single founding events could
explain the populations better than random genetic drift of small
isolated populations or multiple founding effects of large populations.
“The importance of founder events in promoting
evolutionary changes on islands has been a subject of long-running
controversy,” they begin. After their analysis, they conclude
that single founder events are not significant to create genetic
diversity. They note, “The general lack of strong founder
effects accompanying island colonization by silvereyes is particularly
striking given that members of the species complex have been repeatedly
invoked by evolutionary biologists in discussions of island colonization
and founder effects.”
A summary of this paper can be found on
EurekAlert.
The authors are not denying evolution,
of course, but they provide another damaging admission that an example
used repeatedly of speciation by natural evolutionary means is
wrong, when checked in a real-world case. We have seen this kind
of reality check before, often, in these pages. Evolution makes
big, bold headlines, but the retractions are often made in fine print
in the back pages years later, in scientific journals rarely seen by
the public. When things you were taught turn out to be false,
we think that’s news that’s fit to print.
Their retractions are our headlines.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.
New Images of Io Show Active Volcanism 05/28/2002
The Jet
Propulsion Laboratory has released
nine new images
of Io taken during the October 16, 2001 flyby of the
Galileo spacecraft.
The images show several surprises, such as mountains 19,700 feet high
and the crater of a previously-imaged
volcanic
plume 239 miles high. Scientists infer a possible
possible lava lake at the foot of
Tohil Mons,
because no landslide debris is seen at the foot of the mountain.
“Io is a weird place,” comments Torrence Johnson. Without
plate tectonics, Io appears to build its mountains by thrust faults.
Many of the volcanic craters appear to lie within collapsed calderas.
Amazing and exciting discoveries here.
It seems hard to believe these processes could have been going on for
4.5 billion years. We’ll have to see what explanations the
scientists give for this tiny moon having the largest and most active volcanoes
in the solar system.
Another moon with surprises up its sleeves is waiting in the wings:
Enceladus.
When the
Cassini spacecraft
begins its orbital tour on July 1, 2004, a prime target is this
small
icy moon (smaller than Io) whose surface appears to be fresh and bright,
as if recently
resurfaced by an unknown mechanism, perhaps water volcanism.
Cassini’s first flyby of Enceladus is scheduled for February
17, 2005, just one of 74 encounters on the four-year tour plan.
Unlike Galileo, crippled by a defective antenna, Cassini is in good shape
and loaded for bear. 26 months and counting.
Next headline on: Solar System.
Stephen Hawking Says God Rolled Loaded Dice 05/27/2002
According to
WorldNetDaily,
Stephen Hawking believes “God may play dice after all,”
contradicting Einstein’s famous assertion that God does not
play dice with the universe. Hawking and colleague Thomas
Hertog are advocating a top-down cosmology (working from the present
back) instead of the usual bottom-up approach (working from initial
conditions forward). He believes quantum mechanics dictates
this approach, because it explains not how the universe should be,
but why the universe is the way it is.
“God may play dice, then, but only if the dice
are loaded,” the article explains. “If the universe
depends on observables, it also depends on we the observers, so the
dice had to somehow guarantee that we humans would emerge.”
This is, of course, the Weak Anthropic
Principle, which is a cop-out, not an explanation. It states merely that
if the universe weren’t in the ideal state it is, we wouldn’t
be here arguing about whether its existence were possible. But
we are here, so the universe of reality cries out for an explanation
worthy of its fine-tuned existence..
Not too much should be inferred about Hawking coming
around to belief in God from this article. He refers to God in
his writings, but only as another variable in his equations.
Smart as these cosmologists are, they are basically hobbyists who like
to play mathematical brain teasers with each other. They work out complex
mathematical equations about possible realities that only occasionally
intersect with the real universe. If Hawking is growing in his
conviction that our universe is indeed finely-tuned for our existence,
well, I suppose that is progress – more accurately, a return to the
ultimate top-down approach that already explained all the observables:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).
Next headline on: Cosmology. •
Next headline on: Physics.
Proposed Ohio Science Framework Squeezes out I.D., Dogmatizes Darwin 05/24/2002
A draft science standard document for the Ohio School Board is more Darwinistic
than ever, claims
Answers
in Genesis. In spite of
widespread support by the public to include
arguments on both sides, the writers of the new draft standard “utterly
ignored ID [intelligent design] or any aspect of the controversy about
evolution in their revision.” The article contains
a statement by a nationally recognized science teacher in Ohio who
argues for allowing students to hear both sides.
Evolutionary dogma only succeeds by
silencing the opposition. Repeatedly in college debates and other
forums where both sides have equal opportunity to present the scientific
evidence, evolutionists lose; only a small minority favor their case.
That is the reason for the zeal of the NCSE and the Darwin party to
forbid all mention of alternatives, even if it means presenting blatant
falsehoods in favor of evolution, because once students and the public
are exposed to evidence on both sides, there’s no contest. Is
this the way you want science taught to your children? Read
the teacher’s true examples of falsehoods taught in the name of
evolution. Creationists and advocates want people to hear both
sides of the controversy, while evolutionists want to shove the evidence
into the closet and say, ”What controversy? Evolution is a
fact.”
Evolutionists continually portray the controversy in
religious terms, portraying evolution as science and creation as religion,
as exemplified in the recent PBS TV series Evolution. They
prevent legitimate scientific challenges from being heard.
The late triple-PhD chemist
A.
E. Wilder-Smith debated
Richard Dawkins in the hotseat of the Cambridge debate society in 1986,
the same place where, 100 years earlier, Samuel Wilberforce had so
famously lost to Thomas Huxley.
That debate had been a turning point in the academic community’s
embrace of Darwinism, but, as Wilder-Smith pointed out, Huxley
(“Darwin’s bulldog”) won based on a flawed analogy (remember the
million monkeys typing on a million typewriters?).
Wilder-Smith and his colleague succeeded in presenting compelling
scientific evidence for creation, while Dawkins and his
colleague retaliated primarily with religious arguments, clearly
in violation of the rules of the debate, which explicitly stated that
only scientific evidences could be presented. As a result, nearly half
of the predominantly pro-evolution audience
agreed that the creationists had won.
You would think, considering the notoriety the Huxley-Wilberforce debate
generated a century before, that this debate would have been noticed by
the press, but Cambridge refused to publish it, refused to report it,
and stifled it so effectively that there are now no official records
anywhere that the debate even took place! (Wilder-Smith described the
episode often in public speeches and his memoirs). Duane Gish,
“creation’s bulldog” of the modern creation revival,
also recently reminded an audience that out of his nearly 300 debates
with leading evolutionists on college campuses and public auditoriums,
he always stuck to the scientific evidence while his opponents usually
brought up religious and philosophical arguments. When we see
known fraudulent arguments like Haeckel’s embryos and peppered
moths still used as evidence for evolution in textbooks, we ask you
to consider: who is on the side of scientific integrity here?
If you are appalled at the shameful propaganda tactics
of the Darwin party, and if you don’t want to see Ohio churn out
a generation of students parroting “evolution is a fact!”
like little windup toys, you have a chance to share your opinion to the
Ohio
School Board for two more days until Monday, May 27. Please be
respectful and make sure you check your spelling, facts and logic.
Next headline on: Schools. •
Next headline on: Intelligent Design.
Apes Use Stone Tools, Too 05/24/2002
ScienceNow
has a news summary of a paper in the
May 24
online issue of Science about a nut-cracking galley used by
chimpanzees. This opens a new field of human evolution studies
called “ape archaeology.” If similar sites are found in
the fossil record, perhaps the evolution of human tool use could be
traced. Tim White of the University of California cautions, however,
that even the simplest hominid tool site is fundamentally different from
the chimpanzee nutcracking site, where the apes simply use unmodified
stones as hammers against other stones.
On a related subject, the
BBC
News reported April 26 that animal activists in the US were launching
a campaign to let chimpanzees go to court: “The Chimpanzee Collaboratory
says chimpanzees are so close to humans - sharing 98.7% of our genetic
make-up - that they deserve to get the same kind of legal representation
as children.”
Let’s give credit to the ingenuity a
Creator would give to His creatures so that they could eat and survive
in the wild. What’s so big about tool use?
Even birds use tools to dig bugs out of wood. If a bird can build
an elaborate nest, and a beaver an architecturally-sound dam, and honeybees
a geometrical hive, what’s the big deal about apes pounding nuts with
rocks? Evolutionists are driven by the desire to show there is no
essential difference between me and thee and the chimpanzee.
The genetic similarity of 98.7% is an oft-quoted piece of
misinformation. We don’t
mind if apes get legal representation, so long as they hire their own
lawyers from within their own species and pay for them out of their own
banana banks. We’ll even grant them the right of a peel, so
long as they leave it on the floor in the path of an animal rights activist.
Next headline on: Early Man. •
Next dumb story.
Binary Asteroids Puzzle Astronomers 05/24/2002
A team of planetary scientists from Caltech, NASA, JPL and Cornell
writing in the
May
24 online issue of Science discusses the unusually high number
of asteroids that have companions orbiting them. About 16% of
studied near earth asteroids (NEA) have companions, and the parent
bodies have a spherical shape that indicates they did not simply
split apart. Afer ruling out impacts and capture as the most
likely mechanisms, the authors hypothesize that breakup of loosely
bound aggregates from tidal stresses during near-planet encounters
might explain their numbers and orbital characteristics the best.
The problem is that this mechanism could only keep binaries together
for 10 million years, less than one 400th the assumed age of the
solar system, so why are binaries so common?
No one anomaly like this means the
solar system is younger than believed, because there is always some
explanation that can be offered. But when you find numerous
other phenomena that are short-lived, like
ring arcs around Neptune,
young rings around Saturn,
an
atmosphere on Titan that can’t
survive for long,
young meteorites and lunar craters, hot
violent volcanos on a tiny moon,
short-lived radioisotopes in the
solar wind,
young-looking structures on icy Callisto,
small moons with too much heat,
comets still burning up when
the source is smaller than previously thought,
and Mars covered with mind-boggling features,
these observations together have to make you wonder how firm that
often-touted number of 4.5 billion years is, considering that scientists
still can’t explain how the solar
system formed in the first place. It is only the radioactive
dating of certain asteroids that yields the standard old age, but what
if there are other explanations for that? Should not all these
other considerations, taken together, have some weight on dating the
solar system? The only reason that the old age date is untouchable is that
a young solar system would not provide the vast periods of time
evolutionists need to account for life on earth. As if that would
help them; we invite our readers to wade through the Chain Links on
Origin of Life and see all the hand-wringing
going on there, too.
Next headline on: Dating Methods. •
Next headline on: Solar System.
Cats Have Evolved to Manipulate Their Owners 05/23/2002
Evolution has given your cat the ability to make you give it
what it wants, claims Nicholas Nicastro, a graduate student in
evolutionary psychology at Cornell University. The
BBC
News reports that Nicastro played 100 different
recorded cat calls to a group of 26 humans and asked them to
rate the pleasantness of the sounds to conclude that cats have
evolved the right tones in their meows [American spelling] to get humans to give
them food, or pet them, or otherwise manipulate their owners.
SciNews
also discusses this story as an experiment on the evolutionary process of
artificial selection.
Others are skeptical and claim this has nothing to do with
evolution or genetics. Nicastro, however, explains,
“Cats are domesticated animals that have learned what levers to
push, what sounds to make to manage our emotions. And when we
respond, we too are domesticated animals.”
Lamarckism is alive and well at Cornell.
Dr. John Bradshaw of Southampton University
correctly argued, “The idea that a female would go up
to a male in a back alley somewhere and say, ‘could I hear
your miaow [British spelling] to see if the kittens you father will be
appealing to people’, couldn’t happen. Cats don’t
have that level of communication.”
But if this is artificial selection, it is not
evolution. Artificial selection is intelligent design!
Human breeding involves guided choice on which animals or plants are
allowed to breed, and has nothing to do with evolution; breeders have
done artificial selection for millennia before Darwin.
So here is another ramification of the evolutionary
mentality: you are the pet, and your cat is the owner. You are
a “domesticated animal” now; your cat has you on the leash.
But we didn’t need an evolutionist to tell us that; we read
Garfield.
Update
The author of the paper, Nick
Nicastro, wrote us to explain that his theory is not Lamarckian; he
is stating that cats that have developed symbiotic relationships with
humans are more likely to leave offspring. Whether or not this idea is
defensible, however, we would claim it is still a case of artificial
selection and has nothing to do with the evolution of cats or humans
from some other kind of creature. Cats had all their organs and
vocalization skills before people decided which ones they liked to pet and
hold, and which ones they wanted to chase away with stomping foot and
angry holler, Scat out of here!
Next headline on: Mammals. •
Next dumb story.
Intact DNA Found in 465 Million Year Old Salt
05/23/2002
English scientists writing in the
May 23 issue of Nature,
report recovering bacterial DNA samples from several salt deposits they
estimated are 11 to 465 million years old.
The DNA sequences, taken from evaporite
deposits in Michigan, Poland and Thailand, were nearly identical to
each other and to living counterparts. They write,
“The close relatives of these salt-crystal phylotypes are thus
ubiquitous, and live in a wide variety of environments, including the
subsurface. Therefore, it is probable that some of these related
but geographically distinct organisms have been separated for millions
of years, yet they still share very similar 16S rRNA sequences.
This lends support to the argument that the molecular clock may be slow
in certain phylogenetic lineages.” They conclude that
“DNA entrapped in halite can survive over geological
timescales....”
Others are critical. A write-up in
New
Scientist thinks this claim will come back to haunt
Nature for publishing it. Some scientists feel the DNA
are common contaminants; others argue that at best, DNA could only
survive a million years without degrading. The authors respond
that salt is a preservative.
Something sounds drastically wrong with
their assumptions. DNA intact after 465 million years? How
can this fragile molecule survive splitting continents, asteroid impacts,
mountain building episodes, floods, earthquakes
and other earth-shattering events? And where is the evolution after
all that time?
How did identical bacterial DNA get spread around the world, and show
no change to the present?
Doesn’t this throw out all the other evolution papers that depend
on the molecular clock?
Isn’t it more likely these deposits are young? Could evolution be a
myth? Question authority (when the authority is questionable).
Next headline on: Dating Methods. •
Next headline on: Geology.
Self-Replicating Evolutionary Cycle Demonstrated in Test Tube 05/22/2002
A paper by a team of Japanese chemists in the May 21
Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences entitled, “Importance of compartment
formation for a self-encoding system,” claims to have demonstrated
that, if tightly compartmentalized, a gene and the protein that reads
it can maintain a “hypercycle” of reactions that is
evolvable and can replicate itself through at least ten generations.
The cycle breaks down in three generations if not compartmentalized.
Moreover, the successful compartmentalized products showed variation
under the selection pressure of the compartments that could have led to
further evolution (although the mutations actually observed appeared to
be either deleterious or neutral).
They used off-the-shelf DNA polymerase in a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)
with in vitro protein synthesis in their laboratory. They
describe their results and its implications for evolutionary theory:
Here, we showed a sustainable in vitro
self-encoding system, where the genotype-phenotype dichotomy gyrated in
a cyclical feedback coupling of the translated product, the DNA
polymerase, and the replicated gene of its own throughout the
evolutionary process. In addition, the system was also proven
effective in evolving molecules based on functional selection.
From the fact that functional selection comes into effect through
imposed strict compartition on a self-encoding system, we may assume
that primitive life used occasional subsequent dilution and
compartition for its evolution. When some of the replicators
adopt strict compartition, their information will become digitalized
and the system will become evolvable.
Recalling the
“RNA World” hypothesis
for how the first
self-replicating, self-encoding cycle might have begun,
they see a bright future:
“As evolution proceeded, the replicator may have taken a more
sophisticated mechanism, such as dividing vesicles, leading to the
development of a whole arsenal of integrated networks that render the
present status of cells. Considering the robotics-supported
technology of directed molecular evolution, it may not be too far to
see the evolution of more sophisticated self-encoding system in the
near future.”
This paper sparked our interest, because
it seemed to be claiming that scientists had almost created life in a
test tube. It seemed to be saying that they got a gene and a
protein to dance together in a self-replicating, self-encoding cycle
that demonstrated how simple molecules could have started an evolutionary
path that led to (eventually) intelligent biochemists who could recreate the
process in a laboratory. Isn’t this a beautiful example of
evolutionary theory verified by empirical methods? Doesn’t
this show the superiority of naturalism over design, in that it leads
to testable experiments instead of speculations about some undefined
Mind out there? Doesn’t this experiment, and others in the
references, show the plausibility of chemical evolution? No; this
was an experiment demonstrating intelligent design.
If you go into a factory and isolate some machines that
have dependencies on the rest of the factory, you might be able to get
them to run as standalone systems for awhile. It is a
non-sequitur to conclude that you
have demonstrated how the factory created itself. At every step
in this experiment, the scientists imposed their intelligent guidance on the
molecules to make them do what they otherwise would not do. This
is called the fallacy of investigator interference and is a serious
flaw in chemical evolution studies, as explained in the book
The
Mystery of Life’s Origin by Thaxton, Bradley and Olsen.
Moreover, these researchers started out with very information-rich
ingredients: a gene and the sophisticated enzyme DNA polymerase.
Did you see their magic trick? Watch carefully: “When
some of the replicators adopt strict compartition,” they say, “their
information will become digitalized...” Whoa! What
information? That was a clever sleight-of-hand maneuver... did you
catch it? Go read the quote above again: they got information out
of compartition, just like pulling a rabbit out of a hat! Then for
the grand finale, they pull lions, tigers, elephants and whales out of the
same hat: sophisticated
mechanisms, dividing vesicles, and a “whole arsenal of integrated
networks that render the present status of cells.” Clap
enthusiastically for this dazzling magic show!
Back to the real world. How was the trick done?
Like running an existing power tool, they merely harnessed existing
design and information built into these molecules to make them work
for awhile (without their usual retinue of error-correcting and proofreading
helpers) until they sputtered to a halt. Left unexplained is how
DNA polymerase and the gene that codes for it could have ever originated
out of simple molecules without help from intelligent design. They took
a giant leap of faith. “But at least they were in the lab
experimenting; isn’t that better than just giving up and claiming
‘God did it’?” (This is a favorite criticism of Eugenie
Scott and the NCSE.) It depends.
To illustrate this, picture a large canyon, representing
the origin of life, that the evolutionists must cross by building a
bridge over it. They think they are making progress when they hire a
helicopter to hold a steel girder out in mid-air and say, “We have
demonstrated that this girder would work as part of our bridge, if all
the other parts were in place.” But what happens the moment they
let go of the girder, and the pilot flies away? It crashes to the
bottom of the canyon, accomplishing nothing. In their write-up of
their results, they might refer to other helicopters that have held up other
girders and cables at other points, none of which could have ever hung
out there in mid-air waiting for the next piece to join up, yet they
boast about the progress they’re making.
An evolutionist may retort that they are not holding their
girders in mid-air, but building from the sides to meet in the middle.
No they are not; every one of their experiments independently cheats by
invoking intelligent design (the helicopter or the prefabricated girders),
which is unlike what nature would do. To imitate nature, they would
have to take their intelligently guiding hands off the apparatus, and
wait for millions of years in despair while nothing happens. Besides,
nature would only be able to build from one side of the canyon, and would have
no directionality or will to aim for the other side, or to build on any
previous “successes”. (How do you define success, by the
way, without
a mind?) Invoking natural selection prior to replication is
also cheating; but without it, there is no building on prior successes.
Our bridge analogy is actually generous toward evolution; we gave them
helicopters and steel girders, which are all designed objects built or
manipulated
by intelligent minds. The evolutionists’ task is to tell us how
mindless nature, using raw materials like iron ore, built the bridge itself,
without help, and tell us why nature would even want to do such a
marvelous thing. And why even grant them the iron ore? Go back
far enough, and they have to explain the origin of all the raw materials
from nothing.
The Japanese researchers got their cycle going using
existing off-the-shelf DNA polymerase and genes from existing bacteria.
This is like the girder held in mid-air 50' from the far side of the canyon,
while thousands of feet of missing bridge are simply assumed to be filled in
by someone else.
To show what a huge gap that is, consider that both the protein and the
gene were made of single-handed components:
left-handed amino acids for
the protein, and right-handed sugars for the gene. The probability
of getting even a short protein or gene of just 100 building blocks all of
one hand is like the probability of flipping coins and getting 100 heads
in a row: it is astronomically
improbable, so much so that we can say confidently it would never happen
in the whole universe in 20 billion years, even if every star had a planet
with six billion people flipping coins trying. This one consideration
alone renders chemical evolution a pseudoscience.
Another huge gap is the fact
that DNA is a language, a code, a carrier of information. Even
these researchers correctly call it an informational molecule.
As the triple-PhD organic chemist A. E. Wilder-Smith used to emphasize,
languages only carry meaning
if there is a language convention, an agreement between two parties
on what the code represents.
I0 could mean ten,
or two in binary digits, or sixteen in hexadecimal, or one of the moons of
Jupiter, or nothing at all – depending on what we all agree in
advance it means. It is meaningless until meaning is imposed on
it. In DNA, GCC codes for
alanine, an amino acid. GCC is not
alanine, does not look like alanine, does not smell like alanine, and means
nothing by itself. But
DNA and transfer RNA and the ribosome have a language convention, so that
when messenger RNA carries a GCC message from the DNA, the ribosome knows
to put alanine on the growing protein chain. And then a host of other
enzymes make sure it didn’t make a typo! This is amazing!
Here we have a real language coding and translation system in nature that bears
the imprint of a mind.
This fact is death to all concepts of chemical evolution. That is why
it is not progress for these Japanese researchers to tell us how
they have assembled a self-replicating hypercycle out of already
information-rich ingredients.
By failing to explain the origin of the key ingredient,
information, evolutionary theories are committing a fundamental
fallacy; they are building their bridges by their own intelligent design,
and then turning around and asking us to believe nature did it without a mind,
guidance, or the will to do it. That is not better than saying
God did it; it is blind faith in miracles with no miracle worker around.
Footnote: does Intelligent Design thinking grind
experimental science to a halt? No way. Look at history: it
was belief in design that motivated Kepler, Newton, Boyle, Maxwell and
most other great founders of science to figure out
nature’s designs. It recently motivated Roderick
MacKinnon to figure out the amazing design of the potassium channel
in the cell membrane.
Design thinking is good for science. It will put an end to the
pantheistic myth that nature works miracles without mind.
If information is a fundamental entity of the universe,
a science that ignores
it cannot hope to succeed. But scientists with a motivation like that of
James Clerk Maxwell will joyfully pursue science to
gain an understanding of the omnipotent Mind that left His imprint on all
of creation.
Next headline on: Evolutionary Theory. •
Next headline on: Origin of Life. •
Next headline on: Intelligent Design.
Chuck Colson Encourages Viewers to Ask PBS to Air Intelligent Design Documentary 05/21/2002
In his daily BreakPoint radio
feature for May 21, Chuck Colson spoke highly of the new film
Unlocking the Mystery of Life
(March 2002), and suggested viewers call their local PBS station to air
it alongside
the PBS Evolution series, that is in reruns this month.
He said, “It’s just basic intellectual fairness–and smart
programming to boot!”
This film is available on our
products page, in many local Christian
bookstores, and from Illustra
Media. A definitive and beautifully-edited documentary on
the intelligent design arguments, we cannot recommend it too highly.
Dr. John Morris, President of ICR, said
this past weekend
that he is not typically an emotional guy, but when he first watched
Unlocking the Mystery of Life, he jumped out of his chair and
shouted “Glory!” He
called it the best film he had ever seen on the evidence for design
and complexity of the cell. “It is wonderful – it is
wonderful!” he said.
Next headline on: Movies. •
Next headline on: Intelligent Design.
Home Schoolers Dig Up Intact Allosaurus 05/21/2002
According to WorldNetDaily,
a scientific expedition led by a creationist organization with
home school student volunteers has dug up a rare 22-foot long
allosaurus skeleton, with all its bones intact, in northwest
Colorado. The fossil shows evidence of flood deposition,
according to the team. Nearby a 100-foot sauropod has been
found, possibly an ultrasaurus, composing a good-sized hill.
The rich fossil site is owned by a Christian home schooling couple
committed to Biblical creationism. They are giving creationist
paleontologist their turn at discovery in a field long dominated
by evolutionists. Another report on this discovery can be found on
ScienceNewsWeek, which quotes a paleontologist saying this is a very rare and
valuable find.
Outrageous! That kids and
Christians and creationists should be allowed to touch these priceless
specimens! Why, they might not understand how old these dinosaurs
are and how they fit into evolutionary history! Relax,
evolutionists. Fossils are not your exclusive property.
We can separate technique from interpretation, and the bones are being
carefully excavated and documented by trained paleontologists.
The data will be carefully preserved and displayed; you can write up
your own interpretation if you wish.
As long they follow high standards of excavation, give kids a chance
to find a dinosaur bone. They’re going to learn a lot, and
hear all the evidence. What a great science project for the
next science fair! Think of all the envious kids gawking at
the display of a 22 foot allosaurus with a skull a yard long. Cool!
Next headline on: Dinosaurs. •
Next headline on: Fossils. •
Next headline on: Schools.
Noted Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould Dies 05/20/2002
One of the most well-known and controversial of
evolutionists, Stephen Jay Gould, died of cancer today,
announced CNN.
Gould, paleontologist at Harvard, was a prolific writer and
popularizer of science. He was simultaneously a thorn in
the sides of neo-Darwinists, whom he criticized vehemently while
promoting his own theory of punctuated equilibria, while at the
same time united with them in fervent opposition to creationists.
Our sympathies to the family of
Gould. He was an excellent and engaging writer, often
stepping on the toes of his colleagues while being boldly forthright in his
criticism of unsubstantiated evolutionary beliefs like gradualism, racism,
eugenics, and the recapitulation theory. Creationists often enjoyed the
fight from the sidelines, as Gould made enemies with the gradualists like
Richard Dawkins and pointed out the holes in their thinking,
especially the systematic gaps in the fossil record, which he called
the “trade secret of paleontology.” The gradualists
would respond by lambasting his punctuated equilibria hypothesis as
an ad hoc suggestion without evidence or mechanism.
Nevertheless, they were united in their intolerance of creationism.
Gould was incensed at creationists who used his arguments against gradualism as
arguments against evolution (see our May 3 entry),
to which creationists responded that facts are facts no matter who
says them, and criticisms are especially noteworthy when coming from
an insider.
CNN is incorrect in speaking of his
“participation in public debates with creation scientists” –
Gould engaged in numerous one-way polemics against creation scientists
but refused repeatedly to stand eye-to-eye with Duane Gish and others
on stage before a live audience or in writing. As a Marxist,
Gould proposed keeping religion and
natural science into
non-overlapping magisteria.
Phillip Johnson
and others responded that such a false dichotomy guaranteed evolutionists
an unopposed monopoly over all knowledge.
We grieve for anyone who suffered terminal cancer.
Gould’s trenchant thinking will be missed. We grieve most of
all, however, that an intelligent person would devote his life to a
doomed theory, and face a godless eternity.
Next headline on: Darwinism and Evolutionary Theory.
Life Didn’t Begin in Hot Springs 05/20/2002
Life was cool or lukewarm when it emerged, says
Science
Now, summarizing a report in the
May 16 Nature. The French team
compared RNA sequences with a computer looking for evolutionary ancestry,
and did not see hyperthermophiles as likely candidates. A theory for
the origin of life around deep-sea hydrothermal vents or in hot
springs became popular 20 years ago, but “The new study swings the
pendulum back the other way, [Martin] Embley [Natural History Museum
of London] says: ‘This is another piece of evidence that there are
problems with the classic thermophile RNA tree.’” The
researchers say, “If our finding is verified, the origin of Bacteria
should be seriously reconsidered.”
What this means is that the options for
those believing in spontaneous generation are narrowing again.
We’ve had years of Discovery Channel documentaries with colorful
images of deep sea vents and hot springs touted as the nurseries of life,
but now that is unlikely. Recently we saw that
salt water is not the nursery,
either, but more like the slaughterhouse. Basically, all the old
images you saw about primordial soup are wrong. Astrobiologists
are so desperate, they are looking
to asteroids and comets bringing biological molecules to earth (where
they will fall apart anyway).
We have some ballads for those who
trust in such things.
Next headline on: Origin of Life.
The Universe Computed Life 05/20/2002
If the universe is a big computer, it might have computed life,
speculates Science
Now. Mathematician Seth Lloyd of MIT calculated the computational
capacity of the universe. According to the summary of his paper
to be published in Physical Review Letters, “the universe
might be a gigantic computer of sorts and the numbers might represent
the calculations it has done so far. If the universe is a computer,
it might be programmed by random quantum fluctuations, Lloyd says, and
that might explain complex phenomenon such as life.”
This is really, really, really stupid.
“If this, then maybe this, they maybe this...” when the whole
presupposition is preposterous. This belief is visualizing
shapes in the clouds, seeing a face that looks like Webster, and making the
cloud the author of the dictionary. It is ancient idolatry and
animism dressed up in third millennium garb.
Next dumb story.
“Since it is assumed that this matter is increate and eternal . . . it must
have produced, from its own resources, everything that has appeared in
the universe, both life and thought.
The total amorphous mass has been able to organize itself, to become
animated and to endow itself with consciousness and thought. It is
clear that if matter is to be looked at in this way it has to be credited
with very great resources, great wisdom and positive genius, since great
genius was needed for the independent invention of the large molecules
which are part of the makeup of any living creature, however humble,
as well as for the invention of the major functional systems that
characterize higher forms of life - the digestive, circulatory,
reproductive and nervous systems.” (Dr. Claude Tresmontant,
Réalités, Paris, April 1967, p.45, cited in
Evolution: Possible or Impossible? by James
F. Coppedge, p. 122.)
Proteins Climb Mountains 05/20/2002
Scientists at Caltech have found that proteins climb an energy
mountain to get home. Nature
Science Update describes how a protein chain begins as a string
of amino acids, but must go through a complicated folding process
that it calls “one of biology’s fundamental mysteries.”
The scientists measured the “energy landscape” in the folding
process. To get to its “native fold,” in which it is
properly folded and functional, it must climb an energy mountain and
settle in just the right valley on the other side. On the way,
there are several pitfalls that the protein must avoid or else it becomes
a useless tangle. Their research is published in the
Journal of the American Chemical Society.
This is amazing. It bears directly on the
old philosophical question of necessity vs contingency: are biological
processes inevitable results of the laws of nature (necessity), or
unlikely consequences out of a host of possibilities (contingency)?
It appears the latter is true in this case. The protein chain does
not do what just comes naturally. It must be guided against
its natural tendencies to get to the proper shape. Without the
proper shape, it is useless or even dangerous.
Protein folding is
one of the most complicated mathematical problems in biology, yet the
cell performs it flawlessly countless times a day in fractions of a
second. This can happen only with the aid of a suite of chaperone
enzymes guided by instructions, which themselves were built by other
guided processes. The whole apparatus screams for intelligent
design, not chance and necessity. Again, we see in this case, as more
facts are known, Nature and the other scientific journals are
remarkably silent about how these intricate guided systems could have
evolved.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry. •
Next headline on: Intelligent Design. •
Next amazing story.
British Scientists Demand End to Darwin Monopoly 05/17/2002
CNN
reports from London that “a group of 30 scientists has
written to the British Department of Education, arguing that
scientific study into the origins of man should not be limited
to Darwin’s theory of evolution. The group –
including eminent scientists in biology, physics, geology and
chemistry – is calling for active debate in the country’s
schools.” The letter was triggered by the media furor over
Emmanuel College inviting a creation speaker,
which angered pro-evolution advocates into calling for an examination into
its teaching policies, even though the private college had recently
received high marks for excellence.
Andrew McIntosh, professor at Leeds University and one of the signers (see
a quote by him on the masthead of this page) said, “Let there be
open debate in the schools and universities of England.”
Hear, hear! This is another
indication of cracks in the Darwinian edifice. Most likely,
this letter will be ignored and shoved aside by the Board, and the pro-Darwin
forces will ridicule and lambaste it in the press, but for how much
longer? How long can the Darwin-only party fail to provide answers
for the origin of life, fail to provide answers for the complexity of life,
base their theory on just-so stories, then turn around and argue that
no alternatives are allowed? How much longer can they justify
suppressing evidence that undermines their monopoly? How much
longer will the public buy the line that science rules out anything
but methodological naturalism, or that the only proponents of intelligent
design are kooks and pseudoscientists? Not for long, we think.
(See our next headline for a good example of amazing design inexplicable
by evolution.)
The Berlin wall between materialism and intelligent design is poised for a
demolition celebration by the people, and you know what side of the wall the
totalitarians are on; they’re the ones with the furrowed brows who
erected the wall in the first place.
See also
Discovery Institute’s list of
100
Scientists who signed a statement saying, “We are skeptical of
claims for the ability of random mutations and natural selection to
account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the
evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”
Next headline on: Darwinism. •
Next headline on: Politics. •
Next headline on: Intelligent Design.
DNA Has Its Own Immune System: RNA 05/17/2002
The May 17 issue of
Science has a special Viewpoint feature about the RNA library, or
RNome (the RNA counterpart of the genome).
We all know about DNA and proteins; RNA was long thought to be just the
messenger/translator between the two. Scientists have increasingly
found RNA molecules, however, to perform many crucial functions including
signalling and expressing genes.
- Gary
Riddihough introduces the new concept of the RNome and its multi-faceted
role in many vital functions, such as protecting DNA from invasion.
- Gisela
Storz describes an “expanding universe” of non-coding RNAs,
including micro-RNAs (sequences of 20-22 bases), with a multitude of
functions that we are just beginning to understand.
- Ronald
Plasterk describes RNA as the genome’s immune system, protecting
DNA from viral attack and damage.
- Phillip
Zamore says that RNA “reflect an elaborate cellular apparatus
that eliminates abundant but defective messenger RNAs and defends against
molecular parasites such as transposons and viruses.”
- Paul
Ahlquist discusses how RNA can silence genes, which makes it a central
player in gene expression.
- A team
of scientists at Rockefeller University has elucidated the core structure
of RNA polymerase at high resolution. RNA polymerase is a chief
molecular machine involved in transcription of DNA. It makes a copy
of a gene from a DNA molecule that can be ferried by messenger RNA to a
ribosome, where transfer RNA assembles the amino acids based on the coded
sequence into a protein machine. The researchers show RNA polymerase
to be a complex system with multiple roles and moving parts, assisted
by a suite of other protein machines. They say it is “conserved
in structure and function among all cellular organisms,” from bacteria
to man.
We thought the DNA genome itself was enough
to make people stand in awe of the Creator, but then came the proteome,
and now the RNome. This adds two more levels of complexity to
what was already incredible, and should triple our awe.
Imagine hundreds of thousands of
finely-crafted parts, all interacting together, performing thousands of
complicated functions with precision and split-second timing, and you
begin to get an idea of what goes on in every cell of your body, and in
the tiniest microbe in a warm little pond. Most of these authors
never mention evolution once. Those that do speak in
glittering generalities about
which groups of organisms have this system or that, but never do they
give a detailed description of how this system could have arisen in
small steps, each step providing an survival advantage, when none of
these complex molecules will form naturally without coded instructions
and machines to build them. Surely biochemistry will spell the death
of Darwinism; it’s only a matter of time.
Next headline on: The Cell and Biochemistry. •
Next amazing story.
Asteroid Crash Accelerated Rise of Large Dinosaurs 05/17/2002
Big rocks slamming into earth not only kill things, they build
them, according to a team of researchers writing in the
May 16
Science. They think an impact at the Triassic-Jurassic
boundary led to the rise of the really big lizards.
The evidence is based on footprint counts and a “modest” iridium
anomaly.
Richard
Kerr in his summary indicates that not all scientists are
convinced. The slight iridium excess at the Triassic-Jurassic
boundary could have been from volcanos or geochemical processes, not
an asteroid. Nevertheless, the story made the CBS radio news, and
other popular outlets like
National
Geographic jumped on the story, saying, “It may well be that
catastrophic events have a far more profound effect in the shaping of life
than people had previously thought.” See also:
Nature Science
Update.
Evolution is the modern Phoenix myth.
Out of disaster rises new and improved life. Try it as a science
project.
This epic tale is built on footprints, an increase in
fern spores, and a tiny measurement of one element (just a few parts
per trillion of iridium). The rocks are dated by the types
of spores they contain, a method based on evolutionary assumptions, so
circular reasoning is mixed up in the
timeline.
The tale itself cannot be observed nor repeated. Too much faith
is invested in evolutionists’ ability to weave stories out of a
miniscule amount of evidence.
Next headline on: Dinosaurs. •
Next dumb story.
How Insect Heads Evolved 05/16/2002
In the
May
16 issue of Nature, paleontologist Graham E. Budd from
Uppsala University in Sweden has written a paper called,
“A palaeontological solution to the arthropod head problem.”
He begins with a statement of the problem: “The composition of
the arthropod head has been one of the most controversial topics in
zoology, with a large number of theories being proposed to account for
it over the last century. Although fossils have been recognized
as being of potential importance in resolving the issue, a lack of
consensus over their systematics has obscured their contribution.”
By analyzing Cambrian fossils from the Burgess Shale and elsewhere, Budd
proposes
a family tree he claims ties the arthropods, chelicerates and onycophorans
together. But problems remain. He notes in closing,
“As the mouth started terminal within the clade
(thus supporting the Ecdysozoa concept), any deep pre-oral structure
would have to have migrated behind the mouth before the origin of
the Ecdysozoa, and then remigrated anteriorly again when the mouth
became ventralized. Such a structure has yet to be identified. ...
This analysis brings fresh insight into, but does not resolve, the
continuing problem presented by the chelicerate chelicera....”
He presents several possibilities of which appendages should be
considered homologous.
Software engineers have coined the
satirical term vaporware to describe software products that
are marketed but not yet built. The sales department is
out there at the customer site crowing about the wonderful features
the new product has (and demonstrating a scripted front-end facade
without the processing engine behind it), while the poor programmers
are back at the home office scratching their heads on how to write
the code. The “product” may have started as a pipe
dream, and consist of nothing more than a flowchart of putative
subroutines that have not even been written. There may be
major hurdles, dependencies on other technologies not yet invented,
algorithms not yet developed, concepts not fully understood, and doubts
whether solutions are even possible. The software engineers may
not even know how to begin.
Evolution is like vaporware. Here it is supposed
to explain so much, and tie together all these disparate phenomena,
but when you get into the details, you find excuses and gaping holes.
It’s as if looking into the code of a highly-advertised
software package and finding the comment “to be developed”
here, there and everywhere. This paper is a good example.
The title sounds impressive: “A palaeontological solution to the
arthropod head problem.” But wade through the jargon and
read the paper, and nothing solid is found: just a series of maybes
and perhapses and proposed solutions that breed new problems.
And we are told that this has been “one of the most controversial
topics in zoology, with a large number of theories being proposed to
account for it over the last century,” so it is not a matter of just
giving the programming staff a little more time to deliver the product.
Where is the solution? There is none!
It’s all promise without performance.
The data (fossils and living arthropods) show a collection of complex
creatures, each fully developed
and adapted to its environment, with no necessary and obvious family
ancestry tying them together. There are more gaps than links.
This scientist would have us believe mouth parts migrated backward and
then forward. Have you seen all the complex mouth parts in a grasshopper
or honeybee? What about all the simultaneous functions that go
with the mouth parts: nerves, muscles, brain changes, digestive functions,
sensory feedback, and much more? Deciding what segment should
have the mouth is the easy part; these are the nitty-gritty details
of hardware and software that Darwinism has not the resources to design.
Like vaporware, evolution is being sold with fanfare
and slick marketing to students and the public. Instead of working
software, there is only computer graphics and artwork and slogans.
Come with us here at Creation-Evolution Headlines behind the scenes
at Darwin & Co. and observe the programmers sweating bullets.
Next headline on: Bugs. •
Next headline on: Fossils. •
Next headline on: Darwinism.
Mendel Museum Laundered of Religion 05/15/2002
“Science has triumphed over religion in an argument over an
exhibition about Gregor Mendel, the Augustine monk who discovered the
laws of heredity,” reports
Nature,
May 16 in the News in Brief section.
“The current abbot had asked that the religious
background to Mendel’s life and work form part of the exhibition
(see Nature 410, 6; 2001), but dropped this request after the abbey
agreed to host annual workshops on bioethics.” The scene is the
Brno monastery in the Czech Republic, home of the Mendelianum museum and
the place where Gregor Mendel conducted his epochal experiments on peas.
The current abbot was unhappy with the exhibit designers, according to the
March
1, 2001 news item in Nature, “because their museum places
too much emphasis on the scientific aspects of Mendel’s life.
The abbot, they say, wants a new exhibition of Mendel’s life that
will reflect his religious beliefs as well as his scientific
interests.” Apparently he gave a year for the museum committee
to come up with a proposal, and when they stalled and he turned up the
heat, they mounted a “disinformation campaign” against him.
Abbott Lukas Evzen Martinec was upset not only about the “low
religious content” of the display, but also that “the
museum’s owners have not uncovered religious motifs that
were hidden during the communist days.” Apparently Martinec
has now compromised and agreed to keep Mendel’s religion out of the
exhibit. Mendel will be remembered as scientist, not monk.
We don’t need Stalin and Kruschev to
turn churches into museums of atheism any more; we have the scientific
establishment to carry on the work of the Ministry of Truth.
Mendel’s faith in God as Creator was a prime motivation for his
rigorous, groundbreaking work that is not only the foundation of genetics,
but a model of experimental method. How can this part of his character
be erased without doing a great injustice to his legacy? What is so
awful about Christian faith that it must be expunged from anything portrayed as
scientific? Many of the greatest scientists through
history were Christians and creationists. It is a
Big Lie to turn them into proponents of
materialist philosophy. Nature should be embarrassed to
portray this as a triumph of science over religion, perpetuating a
false dichotomy and supporting the whitewashing of history.
Next dumb story.
Mars Meteorite Is Dead 05/15/2002
ALH84001 has fallen from grace, according to a report in
Space.Com.
Ed Scott and
David Barber were able to provide a natural process for the creation
of the magnetites that believers had claimed was a biological signature.
They claim also that the magnetites are oriented with other nonbiological
components of the rock, and must have formed at the same time, probably
during impact on the surface.
So was the hubbub over life in the Mars rock a waste of time? One of
the researchers, Ed Scott, replied, “You could argue that it has
been a major stimulus in helping to integrate geology and biology in
the planetary sciences. It’s no longer okay to focus only on
the living or the non-living. We have discovered exciting new
connections on the Earth and on Mars. It is not enough to address
the simple question ‘are we alone?’ We have to
understand more complex questions that lend a new perspective to
planetary science. Why is Earth so different from Mars and
Venus? How special is the Earth? How common are Earth-like
planets?”
These questions are all adequately answered
by Isaiah
45:18, but let them search. It’s a bonanza for the space
program, and gives us a lot of fun material to report on.
Next headline on: Mars.
Hubble “Pillars of Creation” Eroding Fast 05/15/2002
The 1995 “Pillars
of Creation” in the
Eagle Nebula
was one of the most popular photos taken by the Hubble Space
Telescope. Its long narrow pillars of gas were said to be the
nursery for
many new stars. New images with the
NICMOS
infrared camera,
however, show that the gas is eroding quickly, and any stars
being formed are only at a few of the tips. In a million
years (less than a hundredth of one percent of the assumed age of
the universe) the nebula would be gone, says the
BBC
News. It claims that the
Orion Nebula,
however, is actively forming many stars.
The Eagle Nebula is beautiful,
but it shows destructive processes at work, not creative
processes. You can’t always believe the initial
interpretations put forth in the press release.
Next headline on: Stars. •
Next headline on: Dating Methods.
Governor Apologizes to Eugenics Victims 05/14/2002
According to Dr. David A. DeWitt writing for
Answers
in Genesis, Governor Mark Warner of Virginia on May 2 apologized to
the 20,000 who were sterilized against their will as part of eugenics
programs to keep those designated as unfit from reproducing. DeWitt
argues that the eugenics program was motivated by Darwinism, the belief
that the human race would advance by keeping out the unfit.
Carl Wieland in a reprint from Creation magazine explains the
background of the Lynchburg experiments, in which victims were lied to
“for their own good”
by perpetrators and a test Supreme Court case was built on a fabrication.
Ideas have consequences.
You will know them by their
fruits. Have we learned from history? The same
evolutionary philosophy is pushing cloning, stem-cell research,
designer babies and sexual selection. Who is being lied to now,
“for their own good”?
Next headline on: Politics. •
Next headline on: Darwinism.
New Zogby Poll Shows Ohioans Support Intelligent Design 05/14/2002
In his Weekly
Wedge Update for May 14, Mark Hartwig points to a new
Zogby
International Poll that finds that 78% of Ohio residents agree with
the statement, “When Darwin’s theory of evolution is taught
in school, students should also be able to learn about scientific evidence
that points to an intelligent design of life.” Only 10%
indicated “strongly disagree” with the statement. The
poll was commissioned by the Discovery Institute.
We do not place undue value on polls, since
truth is not determined by majority vote, and since polls can be influenced
by factors difficult to quantify, such as the tone of voice of the questioner,
the stress level of the respondent, lack of knowledge of the subject,
perceptions created by the media, etc. But this poll is in line with
others, including national polls, and the results are fairly consistent
from year to year. It is remarkable that despite intense
indoctrination for decades, the public is not buying the line that Darwinism
should have sole mention in the schools. The Darwin-only party must
be running scared with the Ohio school board slated to vote this year on
whether to allow alternatives to evolution in the state’s public
schools. Many parents, though, are probably elated.
Understand that
even if alternatives are allowed, this is only a science framework.
No teacher will be forbidden to teach evolution (forbidding evolution is
not even open for discussion),
no religion will be brought into the science classroom, and no teacher will
have to teach creation against his or her will. It just opens the
door for teachers to explain why this is controversial and expose students
to the arguments on both sides, so that they can learn how to think, not
what to think. Who could be against that? Well, about 10%.
Next headline on: Intelligent Design. •
Next headline on: Schools.
PBS Evolution Series Re-Airs Starting This Week 05/14/2002
The eight-hour PBS series Evolution that premiered last
September, two weeks after the terrorist attacks, is slated to
run one segment a week this month starting May 14-17
(check
local listings). Mark Hartwig in his
Weekly Wedge
Update says the ratings “tanked” last time, but prospects
are not much better this time around. Apparently, many local stations
are airing
the series in the dead of night, for example 10:00 p.m. in Los Angeles.
See our review
of the series from last time, and also the
Discovery Institute analysis,
the Access Research
Network coverage, and
Answers
in Genesis reviews. The AIG site also reviews the current
TV miniseries
Dinotopia.
Next headline on: Movies.
Another DNA-Mending Protein Discovered 05/14/2002
Scientific
American reports on a research paper that identified
a protein named ATR as able to mend DNA damaged by
ultraviolet light. The researchers explain,
“ATR appears to act as a switch that starts the repair process
and also stops cells from proliferating while they are being
repaired.”
This and the following story are two
more data points to prove the Law of Creation-Evolution Headlines,
which states that “Evolutionary speculation is inversely proportional
to the raw data available for analysis.” This story begins,
“Physicians have long marveled at the body’s ability to heal
itself,” and proceeds to describe, without a hint of evolutionary
speculation, empirical observations of a complex system that bears the
hallmarks of intelligent design. The next story is all evolutionary
speculation with no data.
Next headline on: The Cell.
How Abundant Is Life in the Universe? 05/14/2002
Two physicists from Australia are optimistic that life is common
in space, reports
Nature
Science Update. They feel this way because, according to current
thinking,
life evolved quickly on the earth – in only half a billion years.
“Charles Lineweaver and Tamara Davis of the University of New South
Wales in Sydney argue that, despite our sample of habitable planets
being but one, we are not as ignorant about life elsewhere as it
might seem,” the report says.
Space.Com
picked up the theme on May 23 that 1 in 3 planets might have life.
An upcoming publication in the new journal Astrobiology
uses the same argument, that since unlikely events are rare, and life
formed early on the earth, it must not be that unlikely.
Totally unjustified speculation.
There is no basis for calculation; there is no data.
You cannot build a statistical case on a sample of one!
Moreover, they just assume life evolved here, so the
whole argument is circular. This is the kind of nonsense that gets
published uncritically by an establishment that cannot face the fact that
complex specified information does not arise without intelligence.
Name one example, anywhere! If you found a watch in the woods, would
you be justified in speculating that all forests have watches, and that
they arose spontaneously half a billion years after the forest formed?
Nature inserted a tiny bit of sense into their story:
“Several unknowns might
demolish the researchers’ statistical argument. For example,
life may have to develop rapidly if it is to develop at all. Then
we are back to knowing nothing from our sample of one. Or Earth
may be more finely tuned to nurturing life than we think - a truly
habitable planet may have to be not just similar to Earth but virtually
identical.
But even this assumes evolution and falls woefully short of a critical
evaluation that should characterize scientific journal.
The physicists invoke the famous
Drake Equation, plugging in hypothetical values for the variables that
are incapable of being known. No less than Stanley Miller himself
commented wryly that any values you want to plug in can be considered as
valid as anyone else’s. Their calculation is worthless; this
is just grandstanding and headline grabbing. Even though Ken
Nealson is considered a founder of the fledgling field of astrobiology
(the science without data), we appreciate his candor about chemical
evolutionists when he said, “Nobody understands the origin of life.
If they say they do, they are probably trying to fool you.”
Next headline on: Origin of Life. •
Next dumb story.
College Denied Accreditation for Stance on Creation 05/13/2002
Conservative News Service
reports that Patrick Henry College, a conservative
college in Virginia, was denied accreditation by the
American Academy for Liberal Education. Part of
the decision was its insistence that faculty members, including
those in the science department, adhere to the Genesis account of
creation, even though they are free to teach evolution.
The president of the college accuses the accreditation board of
viewpoint discrimination and inconsistent standards of freedom
of thought. The board denies that it rejected the school
based on its creationist beliefs, saying, “We have religious
schools that are members of our organization that teach creationism,
but they teach it in the theology department; they don’t
teach it in the science department.”
Here we have a strange thing, where
freedom of thought and open inquiry are supposed to the highest
virtues, yet a college’s right to teach what it stands for (even
though they present all sides) is forbidden. Let’s be fair
and apply the same standard to all the state universities in the country,
in which you can teach the wildest forms of Marxism or sexual perversion
or pagan mythology but risk censure, hate speech and removal if you dare to go
against the politically-correct straitjacket of thought.
Restricting creation“ism” (why don’t they be consistent
here and call the opposing view evolutionism) to theology, not
science, is a tacit statement that it is subjective and irrelevant to the
real world. Then be fair and call evolutionism the same, because
evolutionism is not only subjective, it is contrary to observable
scientific laws, and has never been observed. If you don’t
accept this conclusion, you haven’t been reading Creation-Evolution
Headlines.
Apparently all viewpoints are equal, but some are
more equal than others. We wonder if the students and faculty of
Patrick Henry College are getting to the point of shouting,
Give me
liberty, or give me death!
Next headline on: Schools.
More People Report “No Religion” – But What Does It Mean? 05/13/2002
The 1990s saw a steep rise (from 7% to 14%) in respondents reporting
“no religious preference,” say Berkeley sociologists whose
research is described in
EurekAlert.
Yet analysis of the responses shows it is not due to rising skepticism
or atheism, since the same respondents report believing in God, prayer
and the afterlife. The sociologists believe it is tied to increasing
politicization of organized religion. The trend was largest among
liberals and moderates. An increasing number were found to be
falling away from the religion of their parents, or were found to have
had no religious upbringing.
It is always risky to try to interpret
statistics like this, since there are so many variables. But one
has to wonder if the liberal churches that embrace evolution are causing
their young people to see religion as less and less relevant to the real
world.
“Organized religion” is one of those meaningless
labels, such a mixed bag of good, bad and ugly that the concept is
a phantom target for critics of “religion.”
The New
Testament teaches that the church is more an organism than an
organization, but needs
leadership
and structure to fulfill its mission. It is God Himself who
equips and calls the leaders. Followers of Jesus Christ, therefore,
are exhorted to be a part of the
body
of believers for edification and
instruction and service. The Bible teaches we are
individually
responsible to God to believe, but as believers we are
not
to be loners.
“Politicization” is a similar nebulous concept that
signifies nothing until it is defined or given specific examples. Jesus
taught his followers that they were to be the
salt
of the earth and light of the world, which implies involvement in
and impact on society, but does that mean supporting a particular political
candidate? We must avoid
simplistic answers in applying these
principles, and in
interpreting statistics.
For an eye-opening example of the church needing to exercise
responsibility to society (that might overlap into “politics”),
read this chilling account by Carl Wieland about the
dark history of eugenics.
Next headline on: Politics.
Earth’s Storm Windows IMAGE’d in Action 05/10/2002
NASA’s new
IMAGE spacecraft (launched March 2000)
has learned some new
things about the upper ionosphere, a tenuous belt of charged particles
that protects us from solar radiation. Traveling at 450 miles
per second, charged particles from the sun (the solar wind) would impact
our atmosphere directly if earth had no magnetic field, and gradually
erode it away. Fortunately, most of the harmful radiation is diverted
around the earth by the magnetic field, but it still sets up
electric currents of a trillion watts into our magnetosphere.
The IMAGE spacecraft has learned that the upper ionosphere,
like a heat shield, throws off some of its own charged oxygen atoms immediately
during solar storms, absorbing some of the sun’s fierce energy.
These ejected particles get trapped by earth’s magnetic field
and form a billion-degree plasma around the planet.
Behind the earth, the magnetic field stretches into a long magnetotail,
that sometimes snaps back some of these charged particles up to 2500
miles per second.
Some of these flow down magnetic field lines at the poles, contributing to
the northern lights. During a space storm, our ionosphere can
give up several hundred tons of material as it protects the biosphere
down below. This process is explained and illustrated with still
images and animations at the
NASA
press release. You can monitor the “space weather”
with its solar storms at SpaceWeather.com.
The warm summer sun, seen from a beach or resort, seems so pleasant and peaceful. But in reality it is like a machine
gunner aiming its weapons of terror right at us. If our planet
did not deploy its homeland security forces, we would be cooked.
Mars may have had a thicker atmosphere in the past, but lacking a global
magnetic field, now has only 1% of earth’s atmospheric shield,
and is thereby subjected to high levels of radiation that will make
future manned visits dangerous (see our March
18 headline about Mars Odyssey’s new measurements of the
radiation environment). Venus has a very thick atmosphere to
protect itself, but at a price: the surface is nearly 900 degrees F.
Only on earth are all the factors just right. Earth’s amazing
ionosphere, working in concert with the magnetic field, acts like a
self-regulating, buffering storm window, that shields us from violence while allowing us to see the twinkling stars at night. It is just one of
dozens of “coincidences” that make life possible on the most
beautiful place in the universe we know.
Next headline on: Solar System. •
Next amazing story.
Animal Tracks a Billion Years Old, Researchers Claim 05/10/2002
Squiggly tracks made possibly by some unknown multicellular organism
have been found in Australia, claim Aussie researchers publishing in
the May
10 issue of Science. They say, “Although nonbiological
origins for the discoidal impressions cannot be completely discounted,
the structures resembling trace fossils clearly have a biological origin
and suggest the presence of vermiform, mucus-producing,
motile organisms.” Yet the rocks they’re in they dated
at 1.2 to 2 billion years old. It had better be at the low end
of the range, says one of the researchers; “It would make it easier for me
to sleep at night.” The previous record for a multicellular
fossil was alleged at 600 million years.
See this summary and picture in
Nature
Science Update.
Evolutionists keep shooting themselves
in the foot by trying to set records. Within their own thinking,
this puts the rise of multicellular organisms earlier and earlier, not
giving evolution enough time. But most likely, they’re just
seeing things. Lots of rocks have squiggly lines. The raw
data do not justify the interpretation.
Next headline on: Fossils.
The Eye: Best of All Possible Optics? 05/09/2002
The eye has a problem: different wavelengths focus differently.
Blue light, with a shorter wavelength, is more sensitive to longitudinal
and transverse chromatic aberration than red. With one lens, and
one retina, how does the eye achieve good focus across all wavelengths?
How does it avoid contrast reversal when scanning across a scene?
Scientists have thought that the blue-sensitive cones used macular
pigment to selectively absorb short wavelengths to offset the effects
of aberration. But now, writing in the
May 9
Nature, four optical experts from Spain and Massachusetts have
calculated and measured the optical quality of real eyes, and found that
blue light is not as blurred as previously thought. For one thing,
the blue-sensitive cones in the retina have a narrower bandwidth that
limits the blurring, and the red and green sensitive cones have bandwidth
that overlaps somewhat. The scientists did experiments with human
subjects and also took into account monochromatic aberration across the
full spectrum of visible light and the spatial density of the different
cones across the retina. They found that, although there
were trade-offs and compromises, all the cones, working together,
achieve the optimum response with minimum aberration:
It has been widely assumed that chromatic defocus from the eye’s
optics degrades the retinal image of short-wavelength light. But
this assumption has not previously been tested in a manner that takes
into account all of the eye’s optical aberrations, measured at
multiple wavelengths. We have shown that there is actually little
variability in the eye’s image quality, as quantified by MTF
[modulation transfer function, a measure of image contrast quality],
across the visible spectrum. Wave aberrations cause the visual
system to sacrifice resolution at a single wavelength but allow it to
gain approximate constancy in spatial sensitivity across the spectrum.
This constancy might provide an even more effective solution to the
problems of chromatic blur than could be attained by attenuation and
sparse sampling of short-wavelength light in an eye with perfect optics.
(emphasis added). Their paper is entitled, “Imperfect optics
may be the eye’s defence against chromatic blur.” They
also suspect that macular pigment, not therefore needed to improve optical
quality, may instead be present to help protect the eye from high-wavelength
damage.
This is just one example of the kind of
detail in engineering the body performs so effortlessly, that we take
for granted. In evolutionary terms, every little improvement would
be caused by accident, and would have to benefit survival so much that
all without the accident die. Clearly, intelligent design is the
superior explanation. Here we see the interesting design approach
that, given the physical constraints of the laws of electromagnetic
radiation, designing an app |
